


Ad Undas

by ghedahre



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Spoilers for chapters 105 & 106, reference to Lord of the Flies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 01:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15086150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghedahre/pseuds/ghedahre
Summary: Eren is back on Paradis in a cell and contemplates his relationship with the people closest to him as he all but tears them apart in favor of the "greater good".





	Ad Undas

**Author's Note:**

> I can't seem to manage to write anything longer than 1k but I hope you enjoy this!

Back on Paradis, with Eren locked in a familiar cell, he wondered how the funeral procession was going. There was never anything grand—the Survey Corps never had the time—but a veteran like Sasha had to have some commemoration.

His lips twisted into a bitter smile. The memory of Jean’s vivid disgust engrained into his mind. He wasn’t wrong. He was guilty for her death, even if indirectly. He was guilty for many deaths. Women, children, families... He thought he had been ready to accept the burden of all of them, even people he cared about—

No, if he was being truthful, he had forgotten how much Sasha had meant to him. How much everyone in the Survey Corps meant to him. He had lost himself inside his own mind during his time in Marley and Connie’s recital of Sasha’s last words—

_“Meat.”_

—suddenly plunged him out of oblivion. It set him over the edge. It was so, so Sasha and he choked on his stuttered breaths that sounded more like low chortling.

Eren had since retreated back into himself. Two days being more than enough time to get over his breakdown, but not enough to keep his mind from running circles around the guilt and confusing frustration.

Mikasa and Armin haven’t visited him. He figured he couldn’t blame them for that, but his heart ached unwillingly. He dreamt of that solemn look Armin gave him as he helped Eren into the zeppelin, and Mikasa; near tears as she pleaded he come home.

The next day they came to visit him. Eren didn’t bother looking up; didn’t know if he wanted to face them.

Mikasa dismissed the guards posted at Eren’s cell, saying they’d like to talk in private with him. She had the authority to, he realized. So much had changed...

He heard a chair being dragged across the stone floor and looked up, involuntarily. Armin was sitting on the chair one of his guards had been using. Mikasa stood in front of the bars, expression hollow.

“Hello, Eren.”

“Mikasa,” he acknowledged.

Her eyes fell to the stone floor, searching for something to say. She had so much she wanted to talk about, she wanted to get angry, to cry, to make Eren understand how upset she was that he left them without even so much as a goodbye... But all she managed was:

“Why did you grow out your hair?”

Eren hadn’t expected this. His hair was of fair length even before he absconded to Marley. He figured this was Mikasa’s weak attempt at getting him to talk to her. That was fine. He’d go along with this for her sake.

He leaned his head on the cold wall, the ceiling stealing Eren’s eyes. “There was this book I read while I was in Marley. It was about this group of kids that were stranded on an island and how they tried to survive together and maintain a semblance of the society they had been thrust out of.”

Eren looked down to see Mikasa staring at him, confused. Armin kept a blank expression.

He continued. “They stayed on that island for... well, I don’t remember how long, but it was for a while...”

At a point during his explanation, he wondered why he was even talking about something this pointless. Did it answer Mikasa’s question? No, but he knew she didn’t care about an answer so much as he was _talking_ to her.

“I remember reading that book briefly.”

Armin had spoken for the first time since coming down here to this dusty, underground cell. Eren had almost forgotten he was there.

“The boys had given up holding together their makeshift society and as they became more unkempt they became more savage,” he met Eren’s eyes with an unwavering coldness.

Eren felt a sick sense of guilt stabbing him multiple times—as if the knife he had pointed at those traffickers so long ago had been pointed at him instead, and he could see his eight-year-old self above him screaming at him to die—

Die!

_Die!_

“Armin...”

He started as he heard Mikasa’s voice.

“I don’t understand you anymore, Eren.”

Eren met his friend’s eyes, still cold, but his lips were twisted, as if desperately trying to keep his anguish in check.

“I’m sorry.” He didn’t know what else to say, so he looked down; if only to spare Armin his stare if he _did_ end up crying.

Armin swallowed thickly, letting out an uneven breath.

“Sorry, Mikasa. I’m going to head back up.”

Armin walked up the stairs, each step on stone echoing through the underground chamber. It became deathly quiet after his steps had faded completely.

Mikasa gripped the bars of the cells and they rattled gently as she shook. Tears silently cascaded down her cheeks. She kept her gaze to the floor, but Eren found it better that way. He didn’t want to know how her eyes would look at him.

“Eren...,” she let out, as if she was being strangled.

“What’s going on with you...?”

His lips curled as he scrutinized a crevice in the stone floor.

“This is necessary, Mikasa.”

She was silent as her hands slipped from the bars. Eren kept his eyes screwed shut until he heard her steps echo and fade out as she left.

It was frustrating watching as his closest friends drew further away from him. For a brief moment, he wondered if killing this many innocent lives was truly necessary.

It was, he concluded. Even if it was at the expense of his own personal relationships, the greater good of all the Eldians would be benefitted. And if his best friend and adoptive sister couldn’t see that, well, that would be their loss...


End file.
